year — there’s real opportunity to
get growth back out at the airport
and then keep them flying with
flying clubs. We’ve had over a dozen
new flying clubs in just Florida this
year where we help them finance
and insure an aircraft.

We’re going to work with high
school programs and STEM
(science, technology, engineering
and math) programs. We’ve got 250
high schools already signed up to
be working with us on facilitating
better STEM aviation programs. We
think we can grow that by hundreds
over the next couple of years, but
then handing them off to the flight
schools that exist today, there’s such
a varied outcome. We’ve got flight
schools that graduate 80 percent of
their students that start and get a
third-class medical. The national
average is 20-some percent. If we’re
going to turn people back on to
flying, we want to help that model
improve in a very dramatic way. So
let’s get the rusty ones back. Let’s
get the high school kids coming in
and have a very successful flight
school environment where people
can graduate and maybe go solo in
a week to 10 days like we tested
this spring.

JEFF MULDER: Bill, what do you
see as the current biggest challenge
and the current biggest opportunity
today and then over the next couple
of years?

BILL SWELBAR: What’s been
encouraging in listening to the
panel over the last 10 minutes
or so is that everyone is talking
about reinvigorating interest in
aviation as a career, however that
comes about. I think one of the
things that I would like to see are
the commercial carriers putting
some skin in this game and start
to entice people into the piloting
career and the maintenance career
at an early age. Further, the airlines
need to help to demonstrate that it
can again be a desirable career and